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San Francisco Dining: Comfortable or Creative

By

Raymond Sokolov

Updated June 13, 2009 12:01 a.m. ET

San Francisco

I did not leave my heart here last year. A pack of furious San Francisco readers tried to rip it out. I thought I had written a warmly positive account of a few local restaurants; my angry correspondents thought I’d dissed their town and missed its greatest eating places. They especially didn’t accept my observation that restaurants in the city’s periphery—The French Laundry, Chez Panisse, Oliveto—had eclipsed the exemplary food scene of San Francisco itself in the mind of the national foodie public. I was...